Icedrop and Stromatolith
Preludes #5 and #6 for bitKlavier
My interest in the Musician-Machine relationship is one of the driving forces behind the development of bitKlavier, and sometimes this has taken the form of a kind of patient listening, where the musician is doing more listening than “performing.” I have another project that emphasizes this that I’ll write about soon, called Machines for Listening, but even some of the Preludes for bitKlavier are characterized by more listening than playing, including #5 (Icedrop) and #6 (Stromatolith), which I’ve decided to share together here for that reason.
Like many of the other preludes, Icedrop takes an existing piece as its starting point—Chopin’s “Raindrop” prelude:
You might be able to hear a shadow of the original in the new piece, but it is submerged in a sheet of slowly melting sonic ice:
Prelude #5, Icedrop, performed by Cristina Altamura
Technically, the piece is not too difficult to play, but most of the notes are silent on attack—we only hear the consequences of having pressed a key some time later, so there is a sense of the machine being out of phase to our actions. We need to slow down and listen.
Under the hood, this glacier is created through the so-called Nostalgic preparations, which are kind of reverse tape delay machines that play our performed notes backwards, then forwards, creating undulating waves of sorts:
The three “N” boxes are the Nostalgic preparations; some respond when keys are pressed, others when keys are released, and the top one only responds when C-sharps are played (I can’t remember why!). Each of these transposes the original pitches by varying intervals (this one transposes by an octave and a fifth, hence the “GentleResonance_fifths” name at the top right; others transpose by fourths, and major/minor thirds, giving different harmonic qualities to the resonances). The “S” box is the metronomic Synchronic preparation, which, in this case, is silent and slow (40bpm), but coordinates the Nostalgic swells into gentle waves. I don’t fully remember how I settled on this bit of sound design—I often don’t remember what happens in a composition session!—but it does create a slowly moving texture that invites similarly slow listening.
Here is the score:
and bitKlavier gallery (put it in the Applications/bitKlavier/galleries folder after downloading), if you’d like to give it a try.
I taught counterpoint at Princeton for many years, and the way that musical lines (and the people who play them) can float and hang, cascade forward (sometimes in tandem, other times not), linger nearly silently, or simply lean into one another in an effort to stay upright, has infused my hearing and making of music. The latter seems to have been at play in Stromatolith, a chorale that emerged one day. For the player, there is not much to do but slowly bring the sonorities to life and let them ring, patiently listening before moving to the next note or chord:
Prelude #6, Stromatolith, performed by Adam Sliwinski (bitKlavier/piano version)
There’s not much of a machine at work here, actually. However, the attack of the piano is smoothed over (a 500ms attack time in the Direct preparation envelope settings), emphasizing the sustain of the timbre. It takes on a different character when performed with a virtual harpsichord in bitKlavier:
Prelude #6, Stromatolith, performed by Adam Sliwinski (bitKlavier/harpsichord version)
and Adam paces the arpeggiations slightly differently here, the much sharper attacks and lack of dynamic range (as usual with the harpsichord) inspiring a different kind of approach to time and listening.
The instrument oscillates between two slightly different tuning systems; the “scale” of intervals is the same in both systems (a flavor of just intonation), but the fundamental shifts between F and A, which are kind of “flat-side” and “sharp-side” oriented tuning, supporting the sonorities of the prelude in ways that I was after. This is a simple kind of “composed tuning” that I’ve written about elsewhere, for those interested. It’s also a kind of “planar” structure, perhaps related to the stratified structures of billion year-old algae-created “stromatolite” formations (like those pictured at the top of this post).
Stromatolith became the starting point for another piece, for chamber orchestra and Hardanger d’Amore, commissioned by Contemporaneous for my friend and collaborator Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh; I’m super excited about this piece, which was premiered earlier this month in Milwaukee by the terrific Present Music, and will be performed at National Sawdust on June 14 by Contemporaneous, and recorded immediately after, so I will be writing more about that later as the recording comes into shape.
Here is the score:
and bitKlavier gallery (put it in the Applications/bitKlavier/galleries folder after downloading), if you’d like to give it a try.